Obama would make a brilliant ex President

It took years for Jimmy Carter to earn public respect for the humanitarian work that he started on leaving the White House in 1981. In the wake of the disastrous Iran hostage crisis, which scarred the end of his presidency, he deliberately withdrew from public view.

Carter, a one-term president, even vowed never to make money off the back of his term in office. But even without such a promise, he would have struggled to build a good legacy. One-term presidents have not generally been judged kindly by history, often with good reason.

Barack Obama said in 2010 that he would “rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president”. Nobody thought he really meant it then. But now the argument is…